“You went through all of this?” Toni asked. “Out on the streets?”
Carla nodded. “Yeah. I worked. I had a pimp.”
“How long, if you don’t mind me asking,” Toni said.
“I don’t mind,” Carla answered. “Four years. I started when I was twelve. I got arrested for the fourth-no, the fifth time when I was sixteen. That time they told me I could come to Angel House. The first house was just opened then. I got to meet Annie.” She turned and smiled at Annie, the love and respect easy to see. “I’ve been there almost two years. My time’s about up now.”
“You’re happy?” I asked.
She smiled. “Yes. Happier than I’ve ever been in my whole life. For the first time, I feel like I’m in control of my own destiny. I got my GED. I’m already enrolled in U-Dub for the fall semester.”
“That’s great,” Toni said. “Danny and I went to U-Dub, and my little sister’s going this fall, too. What are you going to study?”
“Psychology, I think,” Carla said. “I want to be a therapist. I want to be a counselor for girls in the same position I’ve been in.”
“See?” Annie said, fairly beaming. “What a success story. And Carla’s not the only one. All of these girls are special-every one of them. They all have something to offer this world. They just need a little love and encouragement-sometimes the first they’ve received in their young lives. And protection. They need to be protected. They need people to stop taking advantage of them. We give them that at Angel House.”
“Sounds awesome,” I said. “A very noble cause.”
“Thanks,” Annie said. “It’s hard work, but I go home proud.”
“And thank you for agreeing to meet with us on such short notice,” I said. “I think Nancy told you about our particular problem.”
“She did. Carla and I talked about it on the way over.”
Carla nodded. “Since I got to Angel House, I’ve talked to a lot of girls who got picked up at the Mall and the Alderwood Mall,” Carla said. “I’m pretty sure that there’s a gang working up there-they call themselves the North Side Street Boyz. That’s Boyz with a ‘z.’”
“Do you know anything about this gang?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No-only that they hang out at the north-side malls a lot.”
“And you think they’re basically recruiting these girls and pimping them out?” Toni said.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“How’s it work?” I asked. “After they get recruited, do the girls live with the pimps?”
“Some work it that way,” she said. “Sometimes, if it’s a gang of guys, they live somewhere else, and there’s like a house boss who lives with the girls. I think that’s the way it is with NSSB.”
“Would they at least live close together in that case?”
Carla thought about this. “I don’t know,” she said. “It makes sense, I guess.”
I nodded. “In our case, the only names we have to go by are a woman named Crystal, and two guys-one named Donnie and one named Mikey. Have you ever heard of these people?”
“I haven’t. But I’ll ask around when I get back home. Probably one of the other girls has.”
“I’m going to give you another name, too,” Annie said as she wrote something down on the back of her business card. “Reverend Arthur Jenkins. Reverend Art lives in the area where a lot of the gang members are from. He’s pretty close to a lot of the current gang members.”
“Where would we find him?” I asked.
“He’s the pastor at the Twenty-Third Street Baptist Church on Capitol Hill. If you’d like, I’d be happy to give him a call for you and introduce you.”
“Fantastic,” I said. “We could use all the help we can get.”
“Reverend Art might know these guys,” Annie said. “And he’s a wonderful, caring man. I think the guys in the gang respect him, but still he won’t protect one of them if they’re involved in running prostitutes.”
“That’d be great,” I said. “Meanwhile, let me ask another question. Apparently, Isabel’s been gone about a month-that is, she was recruited about a month ago. Carla, can you describe the process of what happens after someone gets recruited? Maybe the first month?”
“I’ll try,” she said. “First, they’ll try to make her comfortable-safe and secure. They’ll treat her nice and buy her things. She’ll start to feel special. Then, the pimp will probably have sex with her. Even if she’s scared, she’ll go along because he’s been so good to her. She won’t want to disappoint him. He’ll keep treating her nice, and then she’ll start to think she’s in love with him. He’ll even tell her he loves her.”
“And all this happens when?” Toni asked.
“I’d say the first couple of weeks,” Carla said.
“Wow, they move fast.”
She nodded. “Yeah. Then, not very long after, he’ll tell her he needs her to have sex with a friend of his. As a favor to him. She’ll do it because she wants to make him happy. Then it’ll be another. Next thing you know, she’ll have her picture taken, and he’ll tell her she has to start going out on dates. He’ll give her a quota. He’ll tell her that she can’t come home until she brings in her quota. And she’ll want to come home, believe me. When she does, he’ll make her turn over all the money. She can’t keep anything.”
“So she’ll be totally dependent on the pimp?” I asked.
She nodded. “She’ll love him, and she’ll think he loves her. She’ll do anything for him.”
“And what happens if she doesn’t?” Toni asked.
“Then he’ll get mean,” Carla said. “I’ve been punched. I’ve been burned with a cigarette. One time he made me stand naked in front of other girls while he beat me with a belt. Another time, when I complained, he called some of his friends over and they gang-raped me. He even threatened to sell me to another pimp in California.”
“Did you ever get to the point where you wanted to just leave?”
“Not really,” she said. “At least, not until I was a lot older. Once you’re in it, it’s kind of all you know. Besides-through it all, I felt like he cared about me. He was like, ‘you know I love you baby, but I need you to do this for us.’ I know now that he was lying-he didn’t love me. Well, maybe he did. I don’t know, even now. It’s weird, you know? But I know now that whatever he thought of me, he cared a lot more about himself. And he cared a lot more about using me to make himself money.”
“But still,” Toni said, “while you’re there, you do what he says.”
She nodded. “Yeah. You don’t feel like you have much of a choice. You don’t want to make him upset partly because you love him-or think you do. And partly because you’re afraid of him.”
“How many guys would you have to see?” Toni asked.
“Until I made my quota, which was usually $500,” Carla said. “If it was a good night, I could make that with two or three guys. If it was a bad night, it might take ten.”
“Did you have to walk the streets?”
“Sometimes. Not too often. Mostly we had dates with guys who called in from the Internet ads. We’d get our pictures taken in a sexy pose, and he’d put it up on Backpage. We’d get tons of calls. If we had a gap and weren’t close to making quota, then they’d drive us over, and we’d hit the streets.”
“Where?”
“Mostly a place we called the Track. It’s between Lake Union and downtown. Kind of by the Space Needle.”
“And you did this every night?”
“Pretty much. I figure in four years I was with four thousand guys.”
“What?” Toni asked, incredulously. “Did you say four thousand guys?”
“Yeah. Figure three to five guys a night-six days a week. Sometimes more.”
“Pretty mind-blowing, isn’t it?” Annie asked.
I shook my head. “It leaves you speechless.”
“We figured it out-we think I made my pimp probably a half million dollars,” Carla said.
“Half a million!” I said.
“That’s right. And I wasn’t his only girl.”
“How many girls did he have?” I asked.
“Most of the time, three or four,” she said.